Bringing an end to the long-running grapevine generating speculations looming over his political career, ex-TMC leader Suvendu Adhikari joined BJP as he took up the saffron flag from the hands of Amit Shah. Adhikari was introduced to BJP with a thunderous applaud from the huge crowd present at Shah’s rally in Midnapore collegiate ground.

Adhikari, the former Minister of Transport, Irrigation, and Water resource in Government of West Bengal, has taken with him a total of more than 40 TMC leaders to the BJP.

Nine MLAs, 6 from TMC, one from CPIM, one from CPI, and one from the INC joined BJP. One sitting and a former TMC MP also defected to the saffron hindutva camp. The following are the names of the leaders who switched loyalty: Banasree Maity- Contai North MLA (TMC), Tapasi Mondal- Haldiya purba MLA(CPIM), Ashok dinda-Tamluk MLA (CPI), Sudip Mukherjee-Purulia(INC), Biswajit Kundu-Kalna(TMC), Saikat Panja- Burdwan Purba(TMC), Shilbhadra Dutta-Barrackpore(TMC), Dipali Biswas- Gajol Maldah (TMC), Sukra Munda- Nagarkata, Jalpaiguri(TMC).

The MP of Burdwan Purba, Sunil Mondal followed the suit, kept his allegiance to Adhikari and joined into BJP. SP Mukherjee, an ex parliamentarian had travelled to the venue of the mega-rally at Midnapore from the guest house in Kolaghat, where all the defecting leaders from TMC had gathered. Some other prominent faces in TMC who switched sides to BJP were Col. Diptangshu Chaudhury, Ashish Dutta, and Bappa Majumdar from Alipurduar, Kartik Pal and Prafulla Barman from Uttar Dinajpur, former MLAs in Dakshin Dinajpur-Satyen Ray & Debashish Majumdar and others.

Since the ground-level support for TMC was bolstered by the efforts and organization of Suvendu Adhikari, and as his supporters are spread across almost all districts in West Bengal, this shift of Adhikari and others to BJP can impact the election. But, the TMC has maintained that it would not have that much effect on the upcoming state assembly elections. The confidence of TMC reflects the support that the party would get from other non- BJP parties like NCP.